EPTThanks for your comments everyone, guess I have to keep on keeping on and hope that everything will work itself out. Still sucks though. :-/
Grad School Ruined my Confidence - Page 2
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Zaranth
United States345 Posts
Thanks for your comments everyone, guess I have to keep on keeping on and hope that everything will work itself out. Still sucks though. :-/ | ||
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fritfrat
United States50 Posts
I would also agree that I feel like most professors at the big schools that require post-docs are primarily PIs anyways, not teachers. At least that lines up for your interests. +1 for southeast Michigan, too. Good luck finishing out. | ||
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Zaranth
United States345 Posts
http://whatshouldwecallgradschool.tumblr.com/ | ||
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babylon
8765 Posts
In any case, I hope it works out for you. Good luck in academia! | ||
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spacemonkey4eve
United States267 Posts
Anyhoo, your situation is basically a mirror of my own. Since you already have a first co-author paper, it looks like you are making better progress than most and I'm sure you'll do well. You and I are going through the "bitter senior grad student phase" as my labmates would put it, and it's entirely normal for most people going into their 5th year and beyond. | ||
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Mothra
United States1448 Posts
On July 13 2012 01:13 Zaranth wrote: Also, for those of you who want to know what it's really like to work in a lab, check this out: http://whatshouldwecallgradschool.tumblr.com/ These are hysterical. | ||
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circoleah
1 Post
I'm hoping that you will still see this message even though the board is so old. I just want you to know that what has happened to you has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with you, your abilities, or your intelligence. I am so sorry to hear your story-because it is so similar to mine! I was studying engineering at the "top university" in Canada - and it was horrible! It was like a prison camp - they get you super stressed out, take away your sleep, then feed you all of their ideas. For us it was: "Engineers are the super elite. If you are too weak go into something easy like arts." We were losing 3 - 4 kids to suicide every year. One day I went to class and everyone was so quite - I was told a kid from our year killed himself because the pressure from finals was too much. He just couldn't take it anymore. Normally when something this tragic happens they bring in grief counsellors to help students and staff cope right? Well we got a 15 minute lecture from our dean telling us that "He was too weak to be an engineer. If any of you are feeling too weak I recommend that you quit engineering and go into something softer." Seriously! I think this is what finally broke my spirit so deeply - to loose one of your peers over something so stupid? Not acceptable. Education is not supposed to cost you your life! But, everyone around you just sucks it up and tries to pretend like nothing is wrong... so I feel like I'm totally crazy - how can no one else care about him? Then there were little things happening on a regular basis. I got an email from our dean telling me that he thought I was "wasting my time with engineering". One time I got an email saying that my grades indicated that I was struggling and that I should seek out help - that I was below the class average. Which was confusing to me because my grades were good that semester. Someone else in my class figured out the trick- he got the email too and stood up and asked all 120 of us - please raise your hand if you got this email - the ENTIRE class raised their hands. Every single student raised put their hand up - now, how can every student be below the class average? Then there were the impossible to pass exams. Sounds crazy right? They were literally mathematically impossible to get a grade over 40%. We were given our physics midterm- a 10 question multiple choice test. Ok, so during the exam most of my answers weren't matching to the choices given so I just ended up guessing. This really killed my confidence because I was doing so well - I knew my stuff going into the exam - but I guess not! I really thought I was going crazy. So we go into class on monday and our prof has this big grin on his face - he goes on to explain that some of the questions had no correct answers in the choices - it was a "typo" he said. He then told us that some of the questions had the wrong numbers written in the problems - a "mistake". And so, it was impossible to get over a 40% on the exam - and it was still going to be counted in our averages. How does this make any sense? What is the point of this? Did he do it on purpose? Then I get an internship - in another country - another COUNTRY! So i move there and work there for 2 months. Wasn't getting paid much at all but I needed to get the credit to graduate. I start getting these weird emails/phone messages from my coordinator saying that he has found some jobs for me to do since I couldn't get a real internship. So I got back to him and was like, what do you mean? I've been working for over 2 months at my internship. Turns out the paperwork was never processed - I found my internship kind of late - I handed in the paperwork on a monday - it was due by the end of that friday. The woman in charge of this didn't process my forms until the next week and marked me as "FAILED INTERNSHIP"! because the deadline had passed. Or what about this girl in economics - she had above average grades in all of her classes - never failed anything - handed in her forms to graduate. She got an email from the dean of economics saying that she was not going to be allowed to graduate because she "didn't deserve it"! She ended up going to an advisor and she snuck her into the list so she could get her degree without the dean finding out. Or, what about these 2 kids in accounting. They were on their second to last semester - they both failed a super hard elective class by .01% and were both kicked out of school. But the one kid was active in student activities so they let him back in and he got to graduate! Perhaps the worst was my friend who was an international student. His visa expired but he didn't realize it. Instead of the school calling him to let him know - the school called the government and had him deported! Can you imagine? A 19 year old kid has this team of government agents show up at his door, force him into a van, and put him on the next plane to Bangladesh? My point in sharing these stories with you is because there were moments where everything was so ridiculous I felt like I was going insane! ( Like, how could any of this be happening? Is this real life? What is wrong with me!? ) And I don't want you to feel like that! It's not you! If you take yourself away from all of the chaos you can see how the work you're doing is incredible! And you should be proud of what you're doing. Research is called research because its not all guaranteed! You're doing it right if stuff isn't working - isn't that why you're doing it in the first place? To find out what works and what doesn't? I don't know when "education" got so out of hand. It's clear to me now that my university's top priority was getting rid of people. It had nothing to do with learning, strengthening students, or inspiring innovation. The point of education now is survival. Unfortunately, this is showing in the upper year students. They can't design. Also, there seems to be this break in understanding of what education is about. In high school you're pressured to much to "get an education" but when you get there it's torture! And has nothing to do with learning. And then your family is like what's wrong with you? Why aren't your grades higher? Are you partying too much? School is simple- you just study and do well. No- there is nothing simple about this. Final thought- Why is it like this anyway? My profs would preach that engineering was an "elite" career - that only the smartest, brightest, gifted students could become one. They said that school was made to be so stressful so that you would be able to handle the immense stress level on the job. That engineering was like war - you're given impossible life or death situations to solve everyday. Now I'm like... Who are they kidding? The most "intense" engineering jobs I can think of are building planes, medical devices, rockets, etc. But wouldn't you want someone who is calm, collected, and confident working on those things? So basically, all of this "training" was for nothing. | ||
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